High-tech censorship on the rise in East Africa

Ethiopia has always been a country at the cutting edge of Internet
censorship in Africa. In the wake of violence after the 2005 elections, when
other states were only beginning to recognize the potential for online
reporters to bypass traditional pressures, Meles Zenawi's regime was already
blocking major news sites and blog hosts such as blogspot.com. Some sites and Web
addresses have been blocked for their reporting ever since, including exiled
media like Addis Neger Online and Awramba
Times.

This year, the strictures tightened again, with what many
observers believe was the rollout of a far more pervasive and sophisticated
blocking system. Starting in April, additional bloggers and reporters noted
that their sites were being filtered, including De Birhan, a news and
analysis blog that was blocked on April 21, when a large number of sites were
inaccessible for a few days.

According to informal surveys taken by one exiled Ethiopian journalist, the sites temporarily blocked
have been joined by a growing list of smaller exile blogs and news services,
including individual Facebook pages like "We Are All Eskinder Nega."
Then, in mid-May, the Tor project reported
that Ethiopia had successfully begun blocking its free anonymizing and
anti-censorship services. Given that Tor encrypts, and to a certain level,
disguises its traffic as normal secure Web traffic, the implication is that
Ethiopia has been rolling out censorship systems that can detect specific
Internet protocols and block them. (Tor's traffic in Ethiopia is still not back
to pre-May levels).

All of this spells growing confidence in the Meles regime
that it can freely block larger numbers of sites, at more specific addresses --
for instance, blocking single Facebook groups without having to remove the
whole of Facebook -- as well as detect and target certain types of Internet
use. The introduction of legislation that would criminalize
the offering of voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP) and Skype-like services
demonstrates how the administration plans to use these new capabilities.
Previously, Ethiopia blocked foreign VOIP services on an individual basis,
Elizabeth Blunt, the BBC's former Ethiopia correspondent, told the BBC, but new
regulations, combined with new technology, would allow the government to place
blanket prohibitions on alternatives to state-controlled telephone calls.

There are still some forms of communication that the
Ethiopian regime seems reticent to block, or incapable of restricting.
Individual Facebook pages may be censored, but if Facebook users in Ethiopia turn
on Facebook's SSL encryption service (see
how to do so here), they can visit these pages without being blocked or
detected. The Ethiopian authorities could, in theory, censor all such encrypted
traffic, or fence off access to all of Facebook's services, but have apparently
chosen not to. That suggests that, for now at least, the Ethiopian government
cannot afford to wall off all popular Internet services without expecting some
economic or political blowback.

Tor is working on
extensions to its software that would disguise it as a more-difficult-to-censor
transmission. But the gap through which undetected, uncensored news gets in and
out of Ethiopia is definitely narrowing.

Meanwhile, neighboring countries like Sudan, battling --
with primitive
censorship, detentions, and forced exile -- their own citizens' ability to
record and share news, must be looking at Ethiopia's sophisticated controls
with some anticipation. Whatever tools of Internet suppression Ethiopia imports
will surely be rolled out by other authoritarian governments in Africa.

San Francisco-based CPJ Internet Advocacy Coordinator Danny O’Brien has worked globally as a journalist and activist covering technology and digital rights. Follow him on Twitter @danny_at_cpj.